The bottling industry continuously seeks innovations that will increase speed and lower costs, especially in the area of sifter fitments and protective peel-away liners. Typically, containers used for products such as spices utilize a sifter to allow a controlled dispensing of the product. The sifters are usually made of paper, plastic or foil and are often snapped onto the container mouth once the container has been filled with the given product. In conventionally available dispensing packages, a protective peel-away liner is adhered to the lip of the container mouth to protect the contents of the container and to perform a tamper-indicating function then a sifter is mounted to the container mouth over the liner. Finally, a closure cap will be applied to the container mouth, over the sifter and liner. Accordingly, to gain access to the contents of the container, the end user must remove the closure cap, then snap off the sifter fitment, peel off the protective liner, snap the sifter fitment back on the container and then invert the container to allow the contents to pour through the apertures in the sifter.
With conventional dispenser packages, the user must, therefore, remove and replace the sifter to the container before being able to access the container's contents. Often the user will find it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to remove the sifter from the container, since they are usually tightly snapped over the mouth of the container. A knife or other tool must then be utilized as leverage to snap the sifter off the container in order to peel away the protective liner. Particularly, elderly and physically challenged individuals find the conventional dispenser packages difficult to use.
Further, conventional dispenser packages add to the expense of the product since they are costly and time consuming to manufacture and assemble especially when utilizing plastic sifter fitments.